A Simple Complication called Life

New York (2009)

Kabir Khan’s first commercial movie was about Afghanistan. Aptly titled “Kabul Express” it tried to look at Taliban and Pakistan. Produced by Yash Raj, It was different from their romantic stuff. Even with the usual clichés, it was a good film.

Thats the reason I was more optimistic about “New York”. But the promos did not excite me much. As the promos flashed on all channels, I was expecting lesser and lesser from the movie. I was not that much enthusiastic to watch the movie this weekend.

New York (NY) is a story about three friends and the effect of 9/11 on their life. The movie starts with Omar (Neil Nitin Mukesh) getting arrested by FBI on the charges of carrying illegal arms. They apply the Patriot act which let them detain a person without any legal obligation.

Omar is forced to spy on his friend, Sameer who is suspected to run a terrorist sleeper cell inspite of FBI having evidence on him. Sameer has married Maya who is now a human rights activist. Omar has not met both of them for more than 7 years.

The rest of the movie is a flashback as what happened in the last 7 years and what is the actual truth behind FBI’s action.

9/11 changed many things in the world including many people’s perspective on religion. The world was polarized and the isolation of humans from each other was accelerated.

NY does not offer a solution neither does it takes sides. But the movie lacks soul. You don’t get involved with the movie probably because its too slow and tiresome. The movie has been stretched beyond a limit. The dialogs, the characters and the situation are clichés. I was expecting the scene to happen and it did.

I guess the makers did not want the movie to be very heavy so spiced it up with songs in between.

Thankfully there are only 4 main characters in the movie. John Abraham plays Sameer Shaikh. He plays his part well showing a traumatized individual.

Neil Nitin Mukesh plays Omar the mole in Sameer’s life. He appears very much out-of-place in the movie. He acted like Fardeen Khan in “Darling” which is quite irritating.

Maya is played by Katrina Kaif who is ok with her heavily accented Hindi.

Irfan Khan plays a Indian born muslim FBI officer. Again an ok performance.

Having 3 out of 4 characters as Muslims really does not help a movie. They might have looked at giving perspective of different people at different side of the law but that makes it so predictable.

The music is so-so and the direction of Kabir Khan is nothing to write home about.

NY disappoints to a large extent because it commercializes too much the main cause of the movie.